Down, but never out.
What looked like a seventh loss in eight games quickly turned into a second-straight win for Crawfordsville on Friday.
The Athenians turned a 16-point deficit early in the third quarter into a 67-64 come from behind win over Speedway.
Trailing 62-55 with just under three minutes to play, Crawfordsville went on a 10-0 run to take the lead. Cohen McClamroch hit a game-tying three at the 1:24 mark, and Alec Saidian gave the Athenians a 64-62 lead with 34 seconds left after Crawfordsville forced a Speedway turnover.
“I told them after the game, if we wouldn’t have pulled it off, it would have been one of the ugliest games,” Crawfordsville coach David Pierce said. “We didn’t play well and we didn’t execute. Somehow they didn’t give up, they played hard. Speedway got tired and made some errors, and somehow pull out a victory.”
Freshman Johnovan Smith, who led the Athenians with 17 points, helped turn up the intensity with his upperclassmen teammates for Crawfordsville in the second half to lead the comeback.
“I thought Alec, Mason (McCarty), and obviously Kenny (Smith) really turned it up a notch in that fourth quarter,” Pierce added. I don’t know why it took us that long. And I really felt like our freshman (Smith) was huge for us and a spark.”
Speedway (1-6) built its lead by outscoring Crawfordsville 20-11 in the first quarter, and led 33-24 at the break.
The Athenians were unable to cut the lead back under 10 again until the fourth quarter. Sophomore Jacob Lee added 15 points, including 10 in the second half.
“I thought Jacob Lee was good and we found him a couple times inside, and we need to find him more,” Pierce said.
Saidian, a senior playing in just his second game this season, contributed 14 points, including eight in the second half. McCarty grabbed 14 rebounds and scored eight points.
McClamroch hit his first and last three, adding eight points in the win.
“Give credit to Cohen McClamroch, he was frustrated that he had what he felt like was an embarrassing performance offensively against North Montgomery,” Pierce said. “He touches the ball the first time tonight and hits it and then hits a big three to tied it with the game one the line. Kudos to him to have the courage to take that shot.”
Crawfordsville (2-6) connected on 56% of its 2-point shots (22-39), but made just 4-of-20 3-point attempts. The Athenians did hold Speedway to an overall shooting performance of 19-of-51 (37%) and held Sparkplug leading scorer Drew Matelic to 15 points on 5-of-17 shooting.
“I want to give a couple shoutouts to Tanner Gilland — he came in and we needed him to chase around three (Matelic), and I thought he played great and hit a couple buckets, and then Jantzen Thayer playing defense, who is a really good defender for us,” Pierce noted.
Crawfordsville plays Cascade on Saturday.
